Looking from Canada to the United States, across Niagara's Horseshoe Falls

Wednesday, March 5, 2008

Are we aware two-tier is coming?

Watched CHCH TV Live at 5:30 with Donna Skelly and Mark Hebscher on Mar.4, 2008; their guests on a health care segment were Tony Clark, of Kidney Cancer Canada, who found his cancer treatment thanks to a pharmaceutical company on compassionate grounds, and Dr. William Hryniuk, of the Cancer Advocacy Coalition of Canada, who said British Columbia is the best province in Canada to be in if you have cancer.

Skelly at one point asked: “Why is the government so resistant to help people who are dying of cancer obtain life saving drugs?”

Clark said: “It’s unbelievable to think that we live in a country like Canada and even in a province like Ontario where we have all these problems. I think they put a value on human life at a certain number of dollars per year - and Dr. Hryniuk probably knows what that is better than I do, I think it’s in the 60-70 thousand dollar range – and if the treatment options surpass that they say tough luck, you know, if you don’t have private insurance, we can’t help you.”

Hebscher: “Is that indeed the case, Dr. Hryniuk?”

Hryniuk: “It's absolutely correct”

Hryniuk mentioned that the approvals process for new drugs is much faster in the U.S. than in Canada, where it is a five step process. Hryniuk said that our health system is “rationing the treatment” of cancer. He also believes that Canadians should start to realize that they will have to get their own drug or critical care insurance, and get it while they are younger– and, although he’s not in favour of two-tier, it’s coming.

Clark also agreed that people will need their own health-care insurance for such critical illnesses. “Day after day, patients are dying because they don’t have private health insurance.”

This sobering segment should be required watching for Ontario’s Liberals. Remember the election of Oct. 2007 – there was nary a peep about ANY health care problems in Ontario. Locally, Jim Bradley, St. Catharines MPP, hardly talked about health care at all. There was no problem with the system!! Just sit back and relax - let Dalton do the driving!

Oh, sure, McGuinty accidentally bumped into some inconvenient cancer patient in the hospital while McGuinty was campaigning, and when the patient (Mike Brady) refused to shake the Liberal’s hand (saying to McGuinty ‘you’re not helping any’), McGuinty JUST WALKED AWAY, essentially calling the patient a liar, saying to him “that’s not true”.

But, again, this is exactly what this segment of Live at 5:30 was saying – the government is not helping. That’s Dalton McGuinty’s Liberal government of Ontario: the government with the high tax rates; with the high health taxes; cuts in coverage; rationing of care; and high employer taxes; that promised in 2007 it won’t raise taxes again – what will McGuinty do now?

We still don’t even know – since Nov. 2007 – why the Niagara Health System in St. Catharines - Jim Bradley’s backyard - has the third highest patient mortality rate in Canada. Is it due to underfunding? The hospital has said it needed more money – where’s the investigation into this? Where’s the Liberal government’s explanation for this? Was everything really all well and good in Ontario’s health care system during the election?

The Liberals never told Ontarians that we will need to get private health coverage, because the government rations patients’ treatment allotments! Everything was supposed to be covered in our Douglasonian, universal health-care Utopia, wasn't it? The trick for the Liberals was to grasp and control political power by portraying a mirage that the Liberals are the sole worthy gatekeepers for the myth known as single-payer, government-run, monopoly health-care. Their health-care house of cards is collapsing; that ball of yarn spun by smug tax-raising, patient-choice-denying Liberals is unravelling quickly.

Dalton McGuinty, the Liberal Premier of Ontario, set the tone for the next four years when he walked away from that cancer patient during the election.